The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin

There's a new treatment aimed at reducing melanoma, and it's seeing positive developments.
An mRNA-based melanoma vaccine has been shown to reduce the risk of death or cancer coming back among patients by 42 percent.
The vaccine has undergone a phase III trial, led by experts in Australia and New Zealand.
Kiwi oncologist Dr Gareth Rivalland led the New Zealand part of the research, and he says this is the first treatment that's added to existing immunotherapy methods - with a significant jump in benefits.
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There's hope for a last minute rush tonight, as a significant number of Kiwis still aren't enrolled to vote in the election yet.
The deadline to enrol to vote is midnight tonight, with voting starting from Monday until election day on November 7.
Chief Electoral Officer Karl Le Quesne says they're hoping 100 percent of eligible people will enrol to vote.
"We want to see that rise, and we're getting a lot of enrolment transactions coming through at the moment - so we know it'll keep going up."
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If you were feeling a little election fatigue before this week, you may now be reaching for the remote, the mute button and possibly something stronger than a cup of tea.
We’ve had the policies, the debates, voting strategies and enough political point-scoring to qualify as an Olympic sport. Voters have listened patiently to arguments about the cost of living, health, education and the economy. All important stuff, of course. But even the most devoted political tragic can only take so many announcements before wondering whether anyone has actually come to fix anything.
Then along comes the gangs controversy. Suddenly, the campaign had a fresh lease of life - although not the sort any party leader, or voter, wanted.
Photographs of Green and Te Pāti Māori politicians at a Mongrel Mob gathering sparked fierce criticism. Labour leader Chris Hipkins condemned their judgement and ruled those parties out of police and corrections portfolios in a potential Government. Then Labour candidate Kerrin Leoni appeared in footage campaigning alongside gang members in Labour-branded clothing. She resigned on Friday.
And just when National may have thought it had a comfortable position from which to criticise its opponents, and boy did they, a photograph emerged of National minister Tama Potaka with Mongrel Mob members at a public hui. Potaka said one gang member was a former schoolmate who had asked for a photo. Christopher Luxon insisted the circumstances were quite different.
Today, photos of Luxon and Erica Stanford at an event around the Abuse in Care report have surfaced.
Welcome to election campaigning, where every photograph has a backstory, every backstory has a rebuttal, and every rebuttal creates more questions.
The trouble for leaders is that voters expect, and deserve, consistency. It is erratic and suspect to declare a standard non-negotiable on a Wednesday, and on Thursday the following week announce that applying it to your own team requires a more sympathetic interpretation of the evidence.
There are genuine distinctions between attending a public event, maintaining family connections and actively campaigning for votes alongside gang members. Politicians should be able to explain those distinctions. Equally, voters are entitled to question the judgement involved, given gang violence causes real harm to families and communities.
We should also remember that contact with gang members does not automatically mean endorsement of criminal behaviour. Politicians sometimes need to engage with difficult people and difficult communities. The challenge is knowing where engagement ends and political promotion begins.
But the timing is brutal. With the campaign already well advanced, leaders have found themselves defending decisions, distancing themselves from colleagues and answering questions they would much rather avoid. The important conversations have been elbowed aside by gang patches and political photographs.
For voters, the weariness is understandable. Shall we have an amnesty on photos with gang members and be done with it? Come on - let's lay them all out on the table and be done with it. Voters want solutions, not another week of political theatre in which everyone claims the moral high ground while checking whether their own footprints are visible.
Thankfully, the election will ultimately be decided by more than one controversy. The campaign is entering its final stretch. Perhaps the best promise any politician could make now is a simple one: leadership and positivity. Or as National would say - Stick to the Plan.
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Irish actor Ciaran Hinds has spent five decades in the film industry, including distinctive roles in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, There Will Be Blood, Munich and Game of Thrones.
His latest project, The Three Urns, will be available for Kiwi audiences too check out soon - as part of the upcoming British and Irish Film Festival.
He says the film follows the story of a man on a mission, but there's some extra details that won't surface until the end.
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Taika Waititi is well-regarded as one of New Zealand's most successful directors - and he's got a new project in the works.
He's known for directing films like Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit, Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do in the Shadows, but the new sci-fi film Klara and the Sun promises to show fans a different experience.
He says he didn't feel the need to 'Taika' this project up too much, and add as many jokes as he's used to using.
"Cause it's a really beautiful story, it's kind of bittersweet as well, and I want to retain all that and not make it a super silly film."
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